Call For Participation

Web based video is exploding. More and more we are seeing video on the Web
used for advertising, enterprise collaboration, entertainment, product
reviews, and other applications. As prices drop for consumer electronics,
amateur and professionals alike are creating increasingly high quality
videos. Social networks are sprouting up around Web-delivered media. IPTV (Internet-based delivery
of television programming) is also maturing quickly. According to a study
done by comScore in July
2007, 75
percent of U.S. Internet users watched an average of three hours of online
video during the month. We can certainly expect the same level of viewers
in other countries as well.

These rapid changes are posing challenges to the underlying technologies
and standards to support the platform-independent creation, authoring,
encoding/decoding, and description of video. To ensure the success of video
as a "first class citizen" of the Web, the community needs to build a solid
architectural foundation that enables people to create, navigate, search, and
distribute video, and to manage digital rights.

Goals

High-level goal: Make video a first class Web citizen, including making it
easy to create, link to and from, describe, and search. Part of
making video a first class Web citizen will involve addressing issues of
accessibility, internationalization, privacy, digital rights, performance,
and device-independence.

To this end, Workshop participants will:

Share current experience with using video on the Web.

Examine current technology, including W3C standards, to understand how
well the Web does or does not support video.

Discuss the impact (current and future) of video on the Web.

Identify key target audiences and their needs. For instance:

end users would like to watch their favorite
programs on demand and search for video content (possibly paying to
view it)

schools wish to use video for online courses,
including synchronizing live video streams with slide
presentations.

What are the use cases and requirements to make video a
first-class object of the World Wide Web?

What is the impact (current and future) of video on the Web?

What will be the impact of advertisements, if any?

User Experience

How does video fit into rich Web applications and the user
experience?

What should be done, if anything, about:

facilitating navigation or search in video content?

enable parental control and filtering?

Video Production

Does video content need to be adapted for the Web, for example in
the mobile Web context?

How can authors create captions and video descriptions? How do we
ensure proper access to visual information and motion by people
with disabilities?

What should be done, if anything, about:

methods to add metadata or annotations in video content? What
ontologies should be recommended?

enabling description and management of digital rights?

Web Architecture

What protocol or content delivery network should be used to
deliver video content?

In its Recommendations, is there one or a small set of
video/audio codecs and container formats that W3C should reference
normatively? Should W3C seek to standardize any of these
formats?

Audience

W3C encourages people interested in the topics listed in the scope section
(strategic thinking about video on the Web, user experience, video
production, and Web architecture) to participate in the Workshop.

Requirements for Participation

There is no participation fee, but registration is required. Registration instructions will be sent to
submitters of position papers.

W3C membership is not required in order to participate in the
Workshop.

Each participant must submit (or be co-submitter of) a position paper.

The total number of participants will be limited. To ensure diversity,
a limit may be imposed on the maximum number of participants per
organization.

Position Papers

Position papers are the basis for the discussion at the Workshop. Position
papers must be submitted no later than 28 November 2007. These papers will
also be made available to the public (see also published position papers from
previous W3C workshops).
Submitting a paper constitutes recognition of the terms of this Call for
Participation about publication of the position paper. Late submission of
position papers may be accepted depending on space availability. Any accepted
late submission won't be considered for the workshop program.

Position papers must be submitted via email to team-workshop-submissions@w3.org,
an archived mailing list accessible to the W3C Team. Note that the system
might ask you to confirm your submission if necessary. Don't hesitate to
contact Philippe Le Hégaret (plh@w3.org) before November 29, if you think
your submission got lost.

The Program Committee may ask the authors of particularly salient position
papers to explicitly present their position at the Workshop. Presenters will
be asked to make the slides of any presentations available to the public in
HTML, PDF, or plain text.

Format

All papers should be 1 to 5 pages, although they may link to longer
versions or appendixes. They must be in English. Allowed formats are (valid)
HTML/XHTML, PDF, or plain text.

Venue

The Workshop will be hosted by Cisco Systems at 225 East Tasman Drive, San
Jose, California, USA. We will also have a telepresence link with Brussels,
Belgium at Pegasus Parc, De Kleetlaan 6A, 1830 Diegem, Belgium.

Deliverables

Position papers, agenda, accepted presentations, and report will also be
published online.